The Olympics

Communism still rules

FORGET checking the Olympic medal count every day. A better way to see how nations stack up is to calculate how many athletes countries had to enrol to win a medal. East Germany bet on a combination of state intervention, talent and dubious training regimes—and still tops the list (although China is catching up fast). Ethiopia benefits from specialisation: all its 38 medals have come on the track and at distances of 3,000m or longer. See the results for the rest of the world.

You can be a small country and still send a large number of athletes. Or the other way round. So, the best way is to see what are the odds of having someone special in your country who will win a medal. The lower the population the more remarkable (less pool of options) it is when they win. For example, China with approx 1.4 billion people has 22 times more opportunities to pick a medalist than GB as it has 22 times its population, or almost five times the chances than the USA, for example. This should be reflected not on who is winning more medals but how many more they are winning as the odds are linked to population numbers. Now, this simple measurement is too simplistic and many other factors play an important role. But nevertheless there should be a correlation and if not, then something is not right (i.e. India).